By the end of the year, every third-grade student in the state of Colorado is expected to be reading English at grade level.

And the parents of each student in kindergarten through third grade who are at risk of not meeting that standard will have to meet with school staff to decide if the child will advance to the next grade.

It's all part of the Colorado READ Act, passed by the Colorado Legislature in 2012 to replace the Colorado Basic Literacy Act.

The Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act uses specific assessments to identify students who have a "significant reading deficiency" and provide proven services -- such as full-day kindergarten, summer school or tutoring -- to ensure students are reading at grade level before they reach fourth grade.

The Act's requirements are time-consuming, but Northridge Elementary School principal Lorynda Sampson supports the change, she said. The new law will level the playing field between schools with a high percentage of low-income students and those with middle- or upper-class students, she said. It will make sure "the haves and the have-nots" have an equal opportunity for a good education.

The biggest time commitment comes from the requirement for additional assessment of students' reading.

In kindergarten through third grade, each student's reading ability must be assessed during the first 30 days of school and two other times during the school year; those who are not reading at grade level must be tested again within 30 days.

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Only licensed teachers can administer the tests, which require students to read aloud to an adult in a one-on-one situation. Sampson said she has brought in retired teachers to help with the task.

If the scheduled assessment and the follow-up both show that the student isn't reading at grade level, the student's teachers and parents have to develop a READ plan to improve the child's reading.

The assessments show which aspect of reading -- such as fluency, comprehension or vocabulary -- students need to work on, allowing teachers to focus their instruction.

"You get to know exactly what each child needs," Sampson said. "We really get to know the fine points of what the kids need and we tailor the instruction."

Teachers at Northridge work together to create small groups of six to eight students with the same fundamental reading problems, so they can learn what they need to and not spend time on lessons covering what they already know, Sampson said.

Throughout the district, additional, short assessments are given every two weeks to see if the students are improving.

"They're checking very frequently to see who's getting it and who's not," Sampson said.

A student who continues to struggle will receive more instruction from a literacy teacher working with three to five students at a time, she said.

And if that's not enough, Northridge teachers are going in early or staying late to tutor small groups of their reading students, she said.

"So some kids may end up with three (periods of) small-group instruction," Sampson said.

The READ Act provides funding for schools to provide this extra support to students who aren't reading at grade level. The St. Vrain Valley School District received $363 per student, or $594,000 for the more than 1,600 students identified as significantly reading deficient, according to assistant superintendent Regina Renaldi.

The district has allocated $200,000 of that amount to put more children in full-day kindergarten, she said.

In just the few months since school started, the additional assessments and instruction are making a difference, Sampson said.

On the 2013 Transitional Colorado Assessment Program exam, 55.6 percent of Northridge third-graders scored in the proficient range in reading; none had scores in the advanced range. The results were worse for the fourth- and fifth-grade students: 39.6 percent of the fourth-grade students showed proficiency, and none had advanced scores; 32.7 percent of the fifth-grade students' results were in the proficient range, and 2 percent were in the advanced range.

Bilingual students who were in fourth or fifth grade last spring received less English instruction during their primary years than those students who were in third, second or first grade.

The school's most recent assessment shows, however, that 77 percent of all the school's students are on track to read at grade level by the end of third grade, or at low risk of not reading at grade level by then, Sampson said.

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